AEA proposes airlines have ultimate say over ash hazards

Association of European Airlines (AEA) Secretary General Ulrich Schulte-Strathaus addressed a conference held Iceland on 15-Sep-2010 to 16-Sep-2010, to review the volcanic ash crisis of Apr-2010, and explore ways to manage such events. Mr Schulte-Strathaus renewed AEA’s call for a "new European approach" to atmospheric ash contamination, placing responsibility for managing such situations in the hands of the airline professionals – pilots and ground-based operations experts. [more]

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Iceland’s Keflavik International Airport is growing rapidly as it handles an ever-increasing demand both to visit the country and to transit it. Both those options are supported by additional services introduced by Icelandair and its fledgling rival WOW Air, together with non-Icelandic airlines, as the impact of the recession recedes.

Iceland appears to have cornered the market in niche tourism and hub/spoke transfer across the Atlantic, to the extent that its larger Nordic region peer airports might learn a thing or two.

But even such well organised airports fall short of perfection. There are questions around the speed at which additional infrastructure will be provided, about who will operate it, seasonality, whether the lack of alliance activity is a good or bad thing, and punctuality levels.

In common with other CAPA airport profiles this report examines the airport by way of several sets of metrics.

Iceland’s WOW Air is planning more rapid growth in 2017 as it adds seven aircraft and continues to expand its North Atlantic operation. WOW’s new routes to Los Angeles and San Francisco will be upgraded to daily while Miami will be launched, giving the LCC eight North American destinations.

WOW launched services in 2012 and only began serving North America in 2015. The LCC has successfully stimulated demand in a market dominated by full service airlines, particularly airlines in immunised trans-Atlantic joint ventures.

WOW expects the trans-Atlantic market can support significantly more LCC capacity and potentially an LCC penetration rate of up to 40% compared to only approximately 5% currently. WOW also has been growing in Europe mainly with additional capacity to existing destinations that is supported with transit traffic growth to North America.